Caroline Kennedy sat down for her first interview with the New York Times since she announced she's seeking to fill Hillary's vacant Senate seat.

It doesn't seem to have gone too well. In their sort of annoyingly faux-high-minded way (I'd prefer it if they just came out and said "Kennedy was a bitch to interview") the interviewers paint her as overly vague and imply she hasn't given much thought to her political platform.

Kennedy must have sensed it wasn't going well and allowed herself to be provoked into snapping at them:But when asked Saturday morning to describe the moment she decided
to seek the Senate seat, Ms. Kennedy seemed irritated by the question
and said she couldn’t recall.“Have you guys ever thought about
writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something?” she asked the
reporters. “I thought you were the crack political team.”

Quite. I'm not a fan of Kennedy's candidacy. But I have more sympathy for her rather than less after this piece.

Here's the actress Debra Winger, in an interview with today's Observer, on why she campaigned so hard for Obama this year:

"I still remember where I was when the supreme court decision came
back four years ago," she says. "I stared at the radio, and I couldn't
believe it. I felt such sorrow and such shame. We never believed that
Bush would get re-elected, and we were asleep." She wasn't going to let
that happen again.

The supreme court decision she's referring to took place eight years ago, of course. Well, OK, that's an easy enough mistake. But then when you read her last sentence you realise that she seems to be conflating Bush's reelection with his first election into one horrible nightmare.

But anyway - who is this 'we' that never believed Bush would get re-elected?

Today’s financial crisis is Obama’s 9/11. The public is ready to be
mobilized. Obama is coming in with enormous popularity. This is his
best window of opportunity to impose a gas tax. And he could make it
painless: offset the gas tax by lowering payroll taxes, or phase it in
over two years at 10 cents a month. But if Obama, like Bush, wills the
ends and not the means — wills a green economy without the price
signals needed to change consumer behavior and drive innovation — he
will fail.

December 27, 2008

It's not often that the fiercely conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer and the editorial board of the New York Times agree. But right now they're both arguing that the government should raise taxes on gasoline.

Gas prices, following the oil price, are now low after falling from a vertiginous high a few months ago, and in the short time since their fall, sales of SUVs have bumped upwards having been on the decline during the years of gas price increases.

This isn't a big deal in itself but it's indicative of the fact that the best way of persuading American consumers to buy more fuel-efficient cars is to ensure that it's significantly cheaper to run a Prius than a gas-guzzling SUV. And that means keeping the price up. Of course, it's pretty tough to raise gas prices when so many people are feeling the squeeze. But Obama and the Dems want to set the nation on a course towards energy independence, and reduce emission of greenhouse gases, and nobody who buys into either of those objectives thinks there's any time to waste.

You might expect the NYT to propose such a measure. Krauthammer's position is more unexpected. He's against raising taxes on principle, and he's a man-made global warming sceptic. But he is a believer, as are most conservatives, in the goal of energy independence, and he thinks reduced American demand for gasoline will depress the oil price and swing the global balance of power to towards the U.S. He recommends balancing the gas tax rise with a payroll tax reduction.

This little moment of harmony points to a broader truth: Obama has a massive opportunity to deliver an energy bill that moves America away from its dependence on oil. You can see why it's such a priority for him. It's an initiative that goes to the heart of how he sees his role as president:

- First, it's a convergence moment. Remember Venn diagrams? Obama loves the bit in the middle. His speciality is finding areas of agreement between people with very different views and outlooks. From different perspectives, and with different emphases, right and left are converging on the goal of more efficient energy-use.

- Second, it's big. Obama sees himself as a transformational president. Setting the nation on a course towards energy independence would be an historic legacy in itself.

December 24, 2008

- The grim
determination with which he sets about describing Christmas as a 'rich
and happy day', even though he can clearly feel the blood freezing in
his veins.

- His wild grab at the topic of trains. His
speech speeds up, he begins to babble, and he clings on to the subject for dear life in the hope that it will whistle him away from the horror of the conversation at hand (the editing means we'll never know
how far this diversion took him).

- The relief with which he falls on his dogs, obviously hoping he can stay down there and never return
to any human interaction ever again.

- Those final moments, particularly the gloom with which Nixon intones
his hope that 'It's a happy time out there for everybody', and the
anguished sigh that meets his interviewer's wishes of good fortune.
Dead air fills the studio. Even Mrs Nixon steps away from him, as if
his misery might be toxic.

December 23, 2008

There's plenty of interesting stuff in Time's interview with the president-elect on the occasion of his being named Person of the Year, including further evidence, if any were needed, that tackling climate change is a high priority. Obama is asked to name the biggest problems he will face in office, and answers the economy, Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, and climate change.

The urgency and determination with which he's attacking climate change are only just coming into focus, following the appointment of an aggressively green team of scientists to top posts. If you'd watched him during the campaign you might not have concluded that the environment would be so key to an Obama administration. He hewed to the Democratic orthodoxy on the subject but didn't make a serious attempt to to differentiate himself from the rest of the Democratic field or from McCain on this issue. He wasn't the 'green candidate'. But it looks like he intends to be a green president (having said that, I suspect he's suspicious of 'green' as a word or ideology - he sees it as a simple question of national self-interest to combat global warming and make America less reliant on fossil fuels).

December 22, 2008

Philip Collins, who was Tony Blair's chief speechwriter at Number 10, has written an excellent piece for Prospect on what makes Obama's speeches so special. It's not, as some have concluded, his grasp of classical rhetoric. Collins points out Obama's speeches don't always read well on the page. The attempts at lyricism can seem banal or meaningless, and as the Hitch once noted there are few memorable phrases from his entire oeuvre - can you think of any? But here's the thing: you can agree with all this and still declare Obama one of the great orators of the modern era. Why? It's all in the delivery.

An Obama speech is, in fact, like a pop song. The lyrics yield no great
mystery. But, set to the right music, a meaning is disclosed that
hardly seemed to be hidden in the prose. No writer could give this
musical sense to Hillary Clinton. But it is always there in the way
Obama hits the important word in each sentence. You get the argument
just by listening to the words he puts aurally in bold. It is there
also in the way he lets a consonant slide, to lengthen the sound and
hold the sentence. It is more like preaching, which, in turn, is like
singing. Will.i.Am, lead singer of the The Black Eyed Peas, proved this
point by turning Obama's New Hampshire primary concession into a song.
No translation is needed between the two forms.

Rod Blagojevich is not a man to walk away from a fight or a blow-dry. He declared at the weekend that he will contest his innocence in the courts. He says he is the victim of "false accusations". The NYT captured the moment well:

“I am dying to show you how innocent I am,” he said, his signature dark locks falling into his eyes.

I for one am quite prepared to believe that Blago is as free from the taint of corruption as he claims.

But what about all those damning quotes from the tapes, I hear you cry? Well, readers, ever heard of a little thing called context? Although I can't be sure how Blago's defence will proceed, let me suggest that the quotes you have read may not be all that they seem. The actual quotes are here matched with (in italics) what I think may be the full quote, or context in which they were given. As you can see, a very different picture emerges.

"I want to make money for the good people of Illinois,any way I can within the law, you understand me?"

"A Senate seat is a fucking valuable thing, you don't just give it away for nothing. You have to ensure the applicant proves he or she has a sterling fucking record of public service."

"I'm going to give this motherfucker his senator? For nothing? Fuck him." (It turns out that Blagojevich has been engaged in an occasional, long running game of Top Trumps with Obama, using the little-known "Washington deck". Blagojevich is here making a playful reference to a proposed card swap.)

"I want to get (the hospital’s chief executive officer) for 50 of those little Christmas cards painted by the sick kids, so I can send them to my fucking loved ones."

December 19, 2008

Having read more about the Warren protests I'm increasingly sympathetic to the dismay and anger of the gay community. The wound of Proposition 8 is so fresh, and Warren is such an asshole. I still think Obama is right to invite Warren to his inauguration for the reason I gave here: Warren, whatever you think of him, represents the views of a huge section of Americans, and this is a national ceremony. But the president-elect could have handled the whole thing more sensitively, for instance by letting gay groups know in advance of his plan and acknowledging that they would be uncomfortable with it. Andrew Sullivan has a good idea for a conciliatory gesture, involving another of the luminaries to be honoured at the ceremony.

Gerard Baker in the Times explains why "quantitative easing" isn't as boring as it sounds:

It is in fact a sensational financial departure, a revolutionary bit of
economic policy. It is the monetary policy equivalent of Martin Luther's
Ninety-Five Theses, the Gettysburg Address or the D-Day landings. And this
week, the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, the most powerful financial
institution on the face of the planet, in characteristically understated
fashion, decided to do it.

December 18, 2008

Obama's choice of Pastor Rick Warren to speak at his inauguration has some groups on the left up in arms. I wish they'd calm down.

Warren is the heir to an older generation of evangelical preachers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Saddleback, his church in California, has a massive following and he has sold many millions of books. He is, quite simply, one of the most influential people in America, and indeed the world. His style is far more emollient and consensual than his predecessors. He doesn't breathe hell fire. He stresses the importance of not demonising those with whom one disagrees. He's put a huge amount of money and effort into fighting AIDS in Africa. But he is solidly anti-abortion, and anti-gay marriage. His support of the recent Proposition 8 amendment in California, outlawing gay marriage, is said to have been a major contributory factor to it passing. Obama has said many times that he disagrees with Warren on some major issues, but that he respects him. He's spoken at Saddleback a couple of times.

There is, of course, some political positioning going on here. Obama wants to send a signal to those on his left that he's in charge, and more importantly he wants evangelicals and other cultural conservatives to know that he respects them - that he's not a liberal radical anti-christ. The pressure groups criticising his decision might find these tactics reprehensible. But I don't think they're just tactics.

Obama campaigned on a promise of change - not just of government but of the political culture. A big part of that is getting away from the politics of "our side" and "their side". Remember that stuff about moving on from red states and blue states? He meant it. Whether one likes it or not, Warren is a hugely important figure to millions of Americans, and this ceremony is intended to represent the whole nation. Some critics are grumbling that George Bush would never have chosen a figure sympathetic to liberals at his inauguration. Well, yeah, that's the point.

Prompted by the Fed's decision to charge no interest on short-term loans to banks, the Washington Post's Paul Farhi ponders the meaning of zero:

The idea of zero seems caveman simple. Humans have understood
nothingness since they first gazed upon an empty larder, though the
mathematical notation of "zero" took a few millenniums of civilization
to come into its own. It seems pretty obvious now (you took arithmetic,
after all), but imagine the ancient mind trying to grasp the notion
that no food, no animals and no fire could all be represented by the
same abstraction.